Guy Stewart's Blog, page 56

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Mary Poppins and Her Journey Into and OUT OF Pain

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention; to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I WOULD jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
I’ve never read any of the Mary Poppins books, though I think I might take a stab at it sometime in the near future, now that I’m retired. There’s a link to them below, briefly summarizing them as well as talking about the number of media presentations PL Travers’ books have been made into.
I’ll be talking about the films here. The first MP was made in 1964. I was seven years old, and my parents took me and my brothers and sister to see it – it was also the first movie I’d ever seen. It left a deep impression on me and when I saw it several times afterward as a teen, young adult, and eventually a father and grandfather, it had the same, profound effect on me: I was transported in time and place to the world PL Travers had created.
Growing up in the egalitarian and racist late 50s, 1960s, and 1970s, I knew nothing of nannies or wealth or magic, really. My father was a construction worker and my mother stayed home with us until my sister started kindergarten. I’m six years older than my sister, so I was in 6th grade the fall my mother got a job in the schools as a playground supervisor. Not that she didn’t work then, but she certainly didn’t DRIVE until then!
At any rate, my life was nothing like that of the British Banks children; and I can guarantee that my life wasn’t magic in the least. In fact, I started to read science fiction when I reached sixth grade (an event I detailed here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/09/possibly-irritating-essay-gateway.htmland here https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2012/11/possibly-irritating-essay-how-science.html). I never really took to fantasy, except for LOTR and NARNIA, but the sense of “magic” engendered by the SF books I read as a kid definitely drew me to a career as a science teacher.
However, it was the character of Mr. Banks that drew me as an adult. While my father was a general laborer rather than a bank manager, he also had something of a drinking problem, one incident in particular inspired me to being the teetotaler I am today. There was something though about Banks and Dad that let me watch the films with fascination; while the Banks of the movies was proper, my dad was…a general laborer, rough, tumble, softball-playing, weekly bowling kind of guy.
He was, however a reader, and what he often read was science fiction (though, come to think of it, I never did ask him WHAT science fiction he read while I was growing up.) He also watched STAR TREK, the original series, and as it turned out, we watched it together.
In addition to be being a man’s man, my dad was crazy about sports – he’d played football and basketball and track as a high school kid, and as I said, he played softball from the Over-30s League all the way through the Over-40s, and Over-50s Leagues, eventually becoming the “coach” of the Bob’s Lookout Supper Club’s team. The supper club opened in 1958, the year after I was born, and was owned and operated by Bob Kinnan (https://www.lookoutbarandgrill.com/about-us/1958) who was also one of Dad’s oldest friends. Mom would tell the story of how they drove out through cow pastures in the dark (no lights on the roads in the country in those days!) trying to find Bob’s Lookout. With me in her arms, she told Dad he’d drive ten more minutes and it he didn’t find it by then, he could take her home. Pronto! He found it, and the rest is history.
At any rate, my dad’s consuming occupation was sports.
And mine was reading. He never really understood that and my brothers and sister (and even Mom, who’d done some fencing for the University of Minnesota(!) were all jocks. And I emphatically was NOT a jock. (With one of the most embarrassing questions in my life, I asked the pre-7th grade PE teacher who was tasked with talking to us incipient adolescents and herding us into the wonders of junior high PE, “What’s an athletic supporter?” I never forgot the responses from the other boys in the room…)
At any rate, while Dad and I were never close until his ultimate collision with Alzheimer’s Disease, we shared STAR TREK; we shared at adventure in imagination to which I am STILL addicted to this very moment!
The genre helped me grow up; it gave me not only a place to hide, but it also gave me a vision to look up and beyond the “present” of my mostly miserable adolescence.
How does all of this intersect with MARY POPPINS, MARY POPPINS RETURNS, and SAVING MR. BANKS? Well, for me, all of the films are about redemption. Not only the redemption of Mr. Banks, but of Michael, his son John, and Helen Lyndon Goff (better known as PL Travers and whose father was Travers Robert Goff).
All of them are eventually saved, not by their parents, but by Mary Poppins – even Helen Goff is saved from despair by Mary Poppins, who in all of those lives didn’t work MAGIC, but Human love. It was never about Magic, but about love. Michael Banks remains deeply wounded and the death of his wife nearly crushes him – but in the end, he, too is healed, just as HIS father was. He deals with his grief and moves forward; as Mr. Banks did, as his son will, and as Helen Goff did – and she succeeded in casting a profound influence (with the help of Walt Disney and BBC Entertainment.)
And along the way, PL Travers & Co even saved me a bit…
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Poppins_(book_series)Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/PL_Travers.jpg/220px-PL_Travers.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 458

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

 SF Trope: Android and Detective

Current Event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arIJm2lAfR8

 Aiden Rakotomolala and Gargaaro Sukarno stared at the cow-shaped robot. Aiden said, "This is what they gave us?"

 Gargaaro -- she preferred Ro to her whole name -- said, "That's what they said.

 "A robot cow?"

 The robot said, "I am not a cow, but a mule. And I am an artificial intelligence. I prefer to be called Ferocious Veldt Roarer. You can call me Ferocious."

 Aiden burst out laughing, "How about I call you Cow Roarer?"

 "That would not..." the robot began.

 Ro laughed as well, "I know my name's funny, but yours? We can call you Cower for short!"

 Cower would have scowled if she'd had a face. Or skin. Or a head. As it was, she said, "I'm not programmed to have feelings or a sense of humor, so I'll call you Rack and Gargoyle."

 Aiden exclaimed, "Hey! That's not funny!"

 Ro scowled, "At least yours doesn't comment on your looks."

 "True, but it does make a comment on his intelligence -- roughly that of a cue ball in a game of billiards."

 Aiden opened his mouth to protest as the door to garage opened from the police station side. The pair of officers who strode in were imposing and grim. The male, short, dark, and scowling, whose uniform seemed barely able to control the musculature beneath; the female, tall, lithe, whose own musculature owed more to the maraging steel cable than muscle and whose face gave away absolutely nothing. She was the one who said, "What a wonder. A billion dollars in training and manufacture, and all these three can do is act like middle school children."

The male shook his head, "It would be better if the two of us just went and did what we do best."

 "What? Kill people?"

 The male grinned -- and the two humans and even the robot took a step back.

The woman said, "I'd love to let the three of you bond and get to know each other, but there are two hundred school girls who have been taken hostage in southern Brazil by JHB."

 "Who?" Rack, Gargoyle, and Cower said in unison.

 The woman looked at the man, who grinned. "See. I said they would."

 Again, RGC spoke as one when they said, "That we would what?" Aiden and Ro looked at each other. Ferocious abruptly sprouted spines along its back that quivered.

 "Synchronize," said the female. "We're sending you to southern Brazil to infiltrate and possibly extricate these girls. We suspect they're all dead."

 "What?" Rack, Gargoyle, and Cower exclaimed again.

 The male shrugged powerful shoulders and said, "Most likely there's nothing for you to do except learn to work together. On the off chance you might actually be able to do something, you've got your orders." He glanced at his female companion and the two snapped off a salute, turned and left the three alone.

 Cower said, "Great. Now I'm stuck with two teenage meat bags." It made an amazingly realistic sigh, and plopped down on one of its backsides.

 Names: ♀ Somalia, Indonesia; ♂ Australia, Madagascar         

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Ariane5_VA221_liftoff2.jpg/220px-Ariane5_VA221_liftoff2.jpg

Slice of PIE: The Future of Medicine in MY Worlds – and How Long I’ve Been Reading About It!

Using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. The link is provided below where this appeared on). Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 1400 hours (aka 2:00 pm).

 Medicine in the Future: From Surgery in Zero G to New Treatments for Disease

 Health care is changing rapidly, with new methods, new instruments, and new drugs. And it'll change even more in future. Health care in space is complicated. Microgravity, cosmic radiation, distances ... it requires a lot of rethinking. Why doesn’t blood pool? Why are inhaled anesthetics risky to the surgeon as well as the patient?

 Z Aung: Doctor

Rivqa Rafael: Writer

Dr. Perrianne Lurie: Public Health Physician

Benjamin Hewett: NASA Management Analyst 

OK – so none of these people write SF about any kind of medicine…that was probably…less interesting than it could have been.

I’ve been reading science fiction with doctors in it since I was thirteen – FRANKENSTEIN (1818) by Mary Shelley, DOCTOR TO THE GALAXY (1965) by AM Lightner, STAR SURGEON (1959) by Alan E. Nourse, the SECTOR GENERAL novels of James White (1962), the STAR DOC series (2010) by SL Viehl, and (of course) ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1972) (and other medic-ally books by Michael Crichton, SPACESHIP MEDIC (1970) by Harry Harrison, I AM LEGEND (1954) by Richard Matheson as well as the ones listed below. My favorite author, Julie Czerneda has a series that’s clearly based on biology and medicine, the SPECIES IMPERATIVE (2004); and an old standby, David Brin’s UPLIFT (1980) universe books.

I’m at work on a series (unpublished so far) in which two cultures – one recklessly genetic engineers whose definition of Human is so broad as to be effectively useless; the other relentlessly hard technologists whose definition of Human is someone who is 65% or more Original Human DNA (as compared to the Original Human Genome Project – 2003) – and if you’re not, you are not Human, but a sort of smart animal.

In it, a character whose genes are easily cloned,[much as the cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks were for the first “immortalized Human cell line” as detailed by Rebecca Skloot (2010), The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks)], has been repeatedly cloned since the mid-21st Century because he is what they have discovered, a “moral soldier”; quite different from the disastrous cloning work Humanity did to create the “perfect soldier”. (Which I HAVE written about, the first story being “Road Veterinarian” (ANALOG, September/October 2019)). They did, and then spent almost a century eradicating that gene line.

I want to play with this concept, but I would have loved to have listened in on the discussion (if there was one! It was the World’s First Virtual Science Fiction Convention; not sure if they Google Met, Zoomed, or some other platformed…

At any rate, the issues I’m looking at in a novel (the wip title is REFORMATION IN THE SKIES OF RIVER or possibly just IN THE SKIES OF RIVER) I’ve started working on, are the ones above. As well, medical practices and health care are also something I’m sure they talked about, though I find myself hoping it didn’t devolve into a “Smash Trump” tirade about Universal Health Care and how that will solve all of our problems (as well as creating new gun laws to stop gang fighting…oh, doesn’t seem to have worked in Sweden, either…and then devolving into a political rally…)

Sorry, didn’t mean to go there, but like everything else, medicine has become a highly charged political topic – rightly so, actually – but it could do without the political posturing and virtue signaling that appear to go with it.

I don’t think ANY of the books above actually deal with health care so to speak! The medical miracles just appear to “happen” without research or any kind of inequity or disagreement. STAR TREK seems to have solved the problem: “ Later on, while Kirk was having dinner with Gillian Taylor in a restaurant and was unable to pay there, Gillian asked sarcastically, ‘Don't tell me they don't use money in the 23rd century,’ and Kirk earnestly replied, ‘Well, we don't.’” (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).

Even in some novels I’ve read recently, injured people are just “popped into the auto-doc” and fixed.

There’s something for me to consider here, and to tell you the truth, I’ve got an evern better handle on TSOR; so thanks!

Resources: https://medicalfuturist.com/category/science-fiction/

Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule

Image: https://scontent.ffcm1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/93711499_2974237795969833_8163210792070545408_o.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_sid=6e5ad9&_nc_ohc=dAOzDSzD2WUAX9kIXBK&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-1.fna&oh=14320e7b26efd9663e3994e5da14a839&oe=5F417949

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 457

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Regarding horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)
H Trope: immortalityCurrent Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_DNA_strand_hypothesishttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109559/
While the Wikipedia entry explaining the Immortal DNA strand isn’t exactly a current event, the second entry IS and though it is a medical paper and written in medical language, it happens to be significant to the life of our family.
To make this understandable to lay people, I’d like to use those worn-out tropes of horror: vampires.
Let’s just say that the vampire DNA strand is immortal, but because so many vampires were killed in the 19th and early 20th century by various vampire slayers such as Koshiko Kamiyama, John Averill, Twelve String Digby (http://www.fvza.org/tophunters.html), Van Helsing and Buffy, it has become widely spread and doesn’t produce vampires any more.
It’s lengendarily reported that the vampire slayings were in response to an outbreak of vampires in the 17th and 18th Centuries (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-real-vampire-slayers-397874.html).
It is the 21stCentury now and people travel everywhere all the time. A chance college meeting leads to romance for a couple with old, Eastern European roots – Curtis Allen is the result and he discovers his vampiric leanings not long after his mom is transferred to the 3M headquarters in Minneapolis. He attends a prestigious private high school…but the story begins when his dad has to tell him about the birds, the bees and the bloodlust…
“Listen, Vlad, you’re thirteen now, there are things you need to know about yourself…”
Vlad snorted, “Dad, I know all about sex, so you don’t…”
“I know you know all about sex! This has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with a family…problem.”
Vlad frowned and said, “What are you talking about?”
His dad cleared his throat. “Listen, son, this is hard for me to talk about, but it has to do with when you get passionate with a girl…”
Vlad laughed. “Dad, you know I’m gay, right?”
His dad sighed, “A father can hope, can’t he? It doesn’t matter the orientation. It’s just that when you get passionate, you can…nibble on people.”
Vlad had no idea why it happened, but he was abruptly so embarrassed, his pale skin flushed red. His throat got tight, and he suddenly found that his hands, sitting in his lap, were worthy of intense study. He managed to croak, “Dad…”
“Listen, son, I can’t sugar coat this, so I’m just gonna say it out loud…”
“Don’t, Dad!”
“You’re a vampire, son, and when you ‘nibble’ on people, you’re passing the virus to them.”
Of all the conversations he’d imagined having with Dad, this was one he’d never thought to rehearse. He opened his mouth then closed it. Finally he managed, “You mean anyone that…has ever had a bite…is gonna become a vampire?”
Names: ♂ Romania             Image: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OCWXw6InF70/TKigMBk87NI/AAAAAAAAAy4/tL7MhIfL9CM/s1600/2212_1025142570.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #3: Ernest Hemingway “& Me”

It's been a while since I decided to add something different to my blog rotation. Today I’ll start looking at “advice” for writing short stories – not from me, but from other short story writers. In speculative fiction, “short” has very carefully delineated categories: “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories by word count; Novel 40,000 words or over; Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words; Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words; Short story under 7,500 words.”
I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
Without further ado, then: Ernest Hemingway
An acknowledged master of the short story, Ernest Hemingway left a legacy of profound images and prose. “Because he began as a writer of short stories, Baker believes Hemingway learned to "get the most from the least, how to prune language, how to multiply intensities and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth.
“Hemingway called his style the iceberg theory: the facts float above water; the supporting structure and symbolism operate out of sight. The concept of the iceberg theory is sometimes referred to as the "theory of omission". Hemingway believed the writer could describe one thing (such as Nick Adams fishing in "The Big Two-Hearted River") though an entirely different thing occurs below the surface (Nick Adams concentrating on fishing to the extent that he does not have to think about anything else). Paul Smith writes that Hemingway's first stories, collected as In Our Time, showed he was still experimenting with his writing style. He avoided complicated syntax. About 70 percent of the sentences are simple sentences—a childlike syntax without subordination.”
He wrote some 80 short stories, and pioneered flash fiction with this diamond: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”
Brevity. Emotion. It’s what he was known for. Visceral. Real life. It did what I admonish the young writers to do in my class: “Make readers FEEL!”
Hemingway’s work was important enough that “The Old Man and the Sea” is still often required reading, even in this age of cancel culture. I imagine that someone still needs to represent dead, old, white guys in literature. It would be…strange to simply remove all such writers. They did write; they did say important things; and Hemingway is perhaps the likeliest candidate to keep around.
What does this mean to a speculative fiction writer? “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1936) begins like this:
“That’s how you know when it starts.”
“Is it really?”
“Absolutely. I’m awfully sorry about the odor though. That must bother you.”
“Don’t! Please don’t.”
“Look at them,” he said. “Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them like that?” The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa tree and as he looked out past the shade onto the glare of the plain there were three of the big birds squatted obscenely, while in the sky a dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they passed. “They’ve been there since the day the truck broke down,” he said. “Today’s the first time any have lit on the ground. I watched the way they sailed very carefully at first in case I ever wanted to use them in a story. That’s funny now.’”
While the title gives the location, with very few changes, the story might have fit in an issue of AMAZING STORIES, which debuted in 1926. By then ten years old, the magazine was well-established, though it lacked anything even resembling literary heft. What if Hemingway had written this story as it took place on the surface of Mars?
Hemingway’s short story prose was clean, almost to the point of being stark as opposed, say, Isaac Asimov’s first story, “Marooned Off Vesta” (1939):
“‘Will you please stop walking up and down like that?’ said Warren Moore from the couch. ‘It won't do any of us any good. Think of our blessings; we're airtight, aren't we?’
Mark Brandon whirled and ground his teeth at him. ‘I'm glad you feel happy about that,’ he spat out viciously. ‘Of course, you don't know that our air supply will last only three days.’ He resumed his interrupted stride with a defiant air.
Moore yawned and stretched, assumed a more comfortable position, and replied. ‘Expending all that energy will only use it up faster. Why don't you take a hint from Mike here? He's taking it easy.’
“Mike” was Michael Shea, late a member of the crew of the Silver Queen. His short, squat body was resting on the only chair in the room and his feet were on the only table. He looked up as his name was mentioned, his mouth widening in a twisted grin. ‘You've got to expect things like this to happen sometimes,’ he said. ‘Bucking the asteroids is risky business. We should've taken the hop. It takes longer, but it's the only safe way. But no, the captain wanted to make the schedule; he would go through,’ Mike spat disgustedly, ‘and here we are.’”
While Hemingway’s prose is terse, it delves. It digs. It makes me wonder. Asimov, whose stories and novels were among the first I read as a maturing science fiction reader, are indeed terse, but there’s no…subtext? Not sure exactly what I mean there. Let me see if I can show you:
Hemingway writes: “Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them like that?” The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa tree and as he looked out past the shade onto the glare of the plain there were three of the big birds squatted obscenely, while in the sky a dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they passed. “They’ve been there since the day the truck broke down…”
Asimov writes: ‘You've got to expect things like this to happen sometimes,’ he said. ‘Bucking the asteroids is risky business. We should've taken the hop. It takes longer, but it's the only safe way. But no, the captain wanted to make the schedule; he would go through,’ Mike spat disgustedly, ‘and here we are.’”
At this point in both stories, the protagonists are marooned. Hemingway communicates more than the scenery, though he does include it. He’s chosen vultures gathering to convey far more than the words themselves alone convey.
Asimov’s prose, while spare, is science fictiony fact-laden and doesn’t dig, nor does it use standard literary symbolism. Hemingway hints at imminent death by the arrival of the vultures (which aren’t named); Asimov explains the situation in spare words…but they lack emotion; they lack the depth of Hemingway’s allusions.
While you might think that this is an unfair comparison – surely current specfic short stories have matured to a point of, in some cases, Hemingway’s work.
Hemingway was born in 1899 and had one short story published in 1921, obviously when he was 21. Asimov was born in 1920 and “Marooned Off Vesta” appeared in AMAZING 1939 – obviously he was 19. They were, in fact contemporaries.
I’ve learned MUCH from Asimov’s novels and short stories.
Now, what can I learn from Hemingway’s short stories (which are, according to some, his BEST writing: “The un-romanticized beauty of Hemingway’s landscapes…and the haunting uncertainty of his characters’ internal struggles…are the real heart of the matter in [his] short stories. The repetition and bloviating that make his novels murky and ponderous are absent in his stories, so that…Hemingway forged…an American idiom as tight, indelible and flexible as a slow blues song played after everyone has left the bar.”
References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway, https://lithub.com/on-the-art-and-influence-of-hemingways-short-stories/, https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/hemingway.pdf, http://www.e-reading-lib.com/chapter.php/82002/20/isaac-asimov-asimovs-mysteries.htmlImage: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 256

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.Fantasy Trope: Magic RealismCurrent Event: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/cent...
Navid Daisuke shook his head, "What do you mean, 'the centaurs are coming'?"
Ngọc Mirjam scowled at him then said, "The centaur objects are sort of a hybrid between an asteroid and a comet -- not all of them are bare rocks like asteroid, not all of them are pure ice like comets. One of them, called Chiron, look like asteroids but have cometary halos. They're strange objects..."
"So then why are we talking about them? We're supposed to be getting ready for the IB Alchemy exam and right now, the only thing I can see that's IB is that 'IB gettin' ready to leave.'"
Ngọc sniffed and took out her wand, tapped it on the edge of the mortar and pestle and said, "Fine then. How about we conjure some of our own centaurs?"
"I can conjure a centaur with some crushed ice, gravel, and a blowtorch."
"Only blowtorch in this room is the one standing next to me." With a flourish, she tapped the edge of the mortar. There was a flash and smoke. When it cleared, nothing had changed.
Navid snorted, "So, where's your centaur?"
"Shut up.""Wasn't this supposed to be our interdisciplinary group 4 project -- you were the Alchemistry person and I was the mythology person."
"I said, 'shut up'. The centaur I was trying for wasn't the half-horse, half-man," she gave him a sidewise glance, "You're the only half-man I want in my life. I don't need one that clomps around not crapping in the restroom. I wanted to create the composition of the Chiron so I could examine its properties pertaining to chrysopoeia, which is..."
"I'm not a moron. I know what changing base metals into gold is all about. My dad majored in transmutational engineering in college."
“So you have a good idea of what I was trying to do. Now if you’ll shut up, I want to figure out where our centaur is…”
Navid turned away in disgust and pulled out his sorcTab and touched it with a finger wand. It expanded and started scrolling through his Favorites. He tapped a screen, scowling. Then his eyes went wide and he said, his voice a whisper, “I found your centaurs.”
“What did you say?” He didn’t say a word. He just turned his sorcTab toward her, tapping it to enlarge the image. Her eyes went wide as Hubble Telescope image drew into a close up: a long asteroid, rimed by a halo of frost was falling toward Earth. Wearing a spacesuit, astride the centaur, was another centaur, this one waving wildly as it plunged toward Earth…
 Names: ♀Vietnam, Estonia; ♂ Arabic, JapanImage: http://www.skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/6255CaernarfonCastle_pic1.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: “It’s a Mistake To Write About People of Different Ethnicities…”

Using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. The link is provided below where this appeared on Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 1500 hours (aka 3:00 pm).
Indigenous authors come together to discuss the craft of writing, how they build futures and alternate worlds through an indigenous lens, their creative process and current projects.
Toni Wi: writer; editor; prospective PhD studentSloane Leong: cartoonist, artist, writer (Hawaiian, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Native American and European ancestry)Sascha Stronach: writerDarcie Little Badger: writer, PhD in oceanographyRebecca Roanhorse: writer, Campbell, Nebula, and Hugo Award-winning (LOVED Trail of Lightning)
This would have been the first event on my list were I going!
However, I’m adding another pair of guests here – my Mind Guests: Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, authors and workshop leaders. After following various leads, articles, and commentaries by other writers, I reached their “workshop book” WRITING THE OTHER, A Practical Approach.
In 1992, at the Clarion West Writers Workshop, “One of our classmates opined that it was a mistake to write about people of different ethnicities: you might get it wrong. Horribly, offensively wrong. Better not to even try.”(WRITING THE OTHER: A Practical Approach, Aqueduct Press, 2005; p 6)
It seemed to Ms. Shawl “to be taking the easy way out.” This led her to write the essay, “Beautiful Strangers: Transracial Writing for the Sincere” (Speculations, October 1999; retrieved from:  https://www.sfwa.org/2009/12/04/transracial-writing-for-the-sincere/)
“Amy closed her mouth, and mine dropped open. Luckily, I was seated when my friend made this statement, but the lawn chair must have sagged visibly with the weight of my disbelief. My own classmate, excluding all other ethnic types from her creative universe! I think this sort of misguided caution is the source of a lot of sf’s monochrome futures.” (It can certainly be said of Children's Literature at this moment...)
It was certainly mine – though I occasionally tried to slip in a name that was not typically given to Caucasian newborns, like “Candace”, “Dejario”, and “Ozaawindib” – and as much of a cultural referent as I could in a short story.
After writing my novel, OUT OF THE DEBTOR STARS, and sending it in eventually to be evaluated at BAEN BOOKS, it has been sitting in my computer, awaiting a rewrite for a couple of years now. In it, my main character is white and Ojibwe. Where I live, the Ojibwe are the predominant indigenous people, though there are Dakota as well. The Dakota lost the war with the Ojibwe a long time ago, so, I wanted to create a character who was not me – I wanted to attempt to be a transracial writer.
The first roadblock I slammed into was an objection to Noah’s bi-cultural name. His first was a popular American name (though actually, Wiki (with infallible accuracy, and interested solely in passing correct, factual, and totally and completely bias-free information) points out that “in view of the Sumerian/Babylonian source of the flood story”, it was Hebrew only secondarily after being stolen from Sumer and Babylon…)
At any rate, Noah’s last name is Bemisemagak and the editor commented that it was too long and he’d just skipped over it...
Really? I get irritated when people refuse to believe that my name is Guy! (I have been subjected to a quick query of “more likely” alternatives: “Greg? Gary? Grant? (any my personal favorite) God?”
So, let’s trample on an indigenous name by noting that it’s too long and we’ll just skip over it...
Admittedly, I was weak on the history when I wrote it. Since then, however, I’ve read THE ASSASSINATION OF HOLE-IN-THE-DAY and a poetry collection by Ojibwe author and poet, Richard Wagamese, (resided in British Columbia, Canada), EMBERS: One Ojibwe’s Meditations.
I absolutely do not claim familiarity with the Ojibwe people, though I have passed through the skeletal remnants of their vast lands; I’ve secretly rejoiced at their prosperity and the white community’s vast irritation when, “Minnesota tribes were the first in the nation to negotiate and sign gaming compacts with a state government.” (https://mnindiangamingassoc.com/about-miga/history-of-indian-gaming/. My home also holds a far darker record – not only the largest execution of Dakota in the state’s microscopic history, but “The mass hanging of 38 Dakota men was conducted on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota; it was the largest mass execution in United States history.”
I have a profound motivation to include “the other” in my writing. I’m trying to sell a short story that also takes place at this time, with Director Bemisemagak, but I haven’t had any luck yet. I wrote a contemporary YA novel, VICTORY OF FISTS in which Langston Hughes Jones is a biracial teen who is a genius, has anger issues, and works to deal with them by writing poetry. My agent tried 17 markets, all of them rejected it for reasons other than “a big, old, fat, white guy can’t possibly [be allowed] to write about a biracial teenager!!!!!” But, it was clear that I was flying into the gathering hurricane that's roaring through YA, childrens, and speculative fiction publishing as people who are leaders attempt to do IMMEDIATELY (and with fanfare) what should have been done wholesale decades ago.
While I hesitate to speculate, I wonder if the REST of the publishing community holds Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward’s enthusiasm for bofwhigs like myself trying to include POC in my narratives? I think it’s important that POCs begin to appear in stories in the proportion in which they are in a society. While there may or may not be enough writers who are POC to cover that need, I’ll continue to include characters who are POC in my writing – whether people notice it or not. Larry Henry, the main character in my story, “Kamsahamnida, America”, was supposed to be black, based on Robert Henry Lawrence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Lawrence_Jr.), First African-American astronaut, died before ever going into space. Robert Henry Lawrence? The Henry’s obvious; Larry is short for Lawrence…nah? *sigh*
I don't want to appropriate culture, I’m want to be part of the effort to ensure that hidden people who made the world are drawn forward to take their real place in history, in today’s world, and in the future worlds. For context, I've worked in a multicultural, average high school as a counselor for the past ten years; if you went there and asked around, others would speak for my behavior and character -- otherwise, you have no idea if I'm writing fiction or fact.
Shawl & Ward conclude with the following, “Tom Wolfe spoke at a Press Club lunch on the subject of ‘writing what you know.’ His point was that this is great advice, but that as writers it’s our job to continually know more…So welcome the Beautiful Strangers. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes with them. Do your best, and you’ll avoid the biggest mistake of all: exclusion.”
In my writing, I'm working hard to do this. I'm working to become transracial and antiracist. I am a work in progress.
Programme Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/scheduleImage: https://scontent.ffcm1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/93711499_2974237795969833_8163210792070545408_o.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_sid=6e5ad9&_nc_ohc=dAOzDSzD2WUAX9kIXBK&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-1.fna&oh=14320e7b26efd9663e3994e5da14a839&oe=5F417949

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 455

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
SF Trope: Evil de-evolutionCurrent Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolution_(biology)(Fascinating article in which an evolutionists tap-dances around the idea that the dissemination of correct information is NOT the responsibility of scientists but of...um...Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, but ultimately Nobody and CERTAINLY not them…(http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/hlife.html))
Ugnė Mertens flipped her pigtail back again as she stared at the image on her laptop. Muttering, she stepped sideways to the microscope and moved the slide using the X-Y translational control knobs fine adjustment. The image of the chromosome she was studying moved fractionally.
Naranbaatar Todorov picked at his thin, first beard and said, “Staring at it isn’t going to make the genes magically appear, Ug.”
“That’s what you think,” she straightened up, she smiled and added, “Baaaaa,” drawing out the stereotypical sheep sound. “Watch.” She touched a pressure toggle on an odd, goose-necked device standing beside the microscope. The computer’s screen fuzzed suddenly, then the single chromosome lit up as if it was a candy cane.
Baa started, looked at the lamp and exclaimed, “What is that thing?”
“Something I invented and you didn’t,” Ug said, sitting on the lab stool, leaning forward.
Baa swallowed hard, pursed his lips then said, “Listen, I know you don’t much like me...”
Ug reached out and typed an entry into the text box then said, “If I had a choice between dissecting three-day-old roadkill and having lunch with you...” she paused, made a face, then said, “I’m not sure which one I’d pick.”
Baa glanced at the clock on the wall. He still had four hours left of his shift. He couldn’t skip it or Dr. Harber would find out and dock him points. But he wasn’t sure he could keep his feet still and not kick Ugnė in the butt. He took a deep breath and said, “Must be an infrared to ultraviolet, rotating frequency projector.”
She shot him a look then went back to making notes on her computer. Occasionally she tapped her smartphone as well, which lay next to the laptop. “Lucky guess.”
“So that means, ‘yes’. Then you must have bathed the chromosomes in a solution that would...” Naranbaatar hooked another stool with his foot to drag it closer. Shrieking as it vibrated along the floor tiles, he winced and said, “Sorry.”
Ugnė sniffed but didn’t reply. Finally she said, “I used a mix that the older the gene, the less fluorescing compound it would pick up.”
Baa frowned then asked, “What are the chromosomes from?”
“A narn.”
“You’re kidding!” he exclaimed. Reports had been circulating for years about animals whose genes had suddenly started evolving – a quantum evolution event – from static forms to much, much more intelligent forms.
“These are chromosomes from raccoons killed in southern Minnesota.”
“We have narns here?” Baa exclaimed, backing away from the microscope.
Ug turned to look at him. “The genes aren’t contagious, idiot! This isn’t a disease – it’s animal chromosomes. Dyed and fixed at that! What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing. Nothing!” He spun around and took long strides out of the lab. He didn’t care if he lost hours – all he could see in his mind’s eye was the raccoon he’d nearly run over when he was biking on rural trails near his family’s home in an outer ring suburb of what was slowly becoming the three, four-kilometer-tall towers of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Vertical Village.
He would never forget the look on its face as it held out a mangled aw to him and said, “Help...”
Names: ♀ Lithuanian, Belgian; ♂ Mongolian, BulgarianSidebar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium       Image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0rHIU_VYAARC9l.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Can This Story Be SAVED? #27 “Not Quite Blue Boy” (Submitted 3 Times Since August 2019, Revised 0)

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!
ANALOG Tag Line:What do you do if you find out you’re not normal, but not the Next Step in Evolution, either?
Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)Seventeen-year-old Martian teen, Kalbin is about to graduate from high school and choose his training. He’d overcome the handicap of having a rare blood disease that kept his body from utilizing oxygen. What he finds out on the eve of his graduation makes matters worse after a friend asks him if he’s one of the quasi-slave Artificial Humans. He’s not. Only parts of his DNA are artificial; the rest are Human…
Opening Line: “Kalbin Chang sprinted along the edge of Burroughs Dome’s biggest park. ‘If he thinks he’s gonna…’”
Onward:From behind the Oldest Tree On Mars, a figure dressed in black charged him, screaming curses. Kalbin tried to drop the ninja assassin with a football block tackle modified to sweep the legs, but the bigger boy easily knocked him over. Flat on his back, Kalbin stared up at the Dome.
Jerking the mask from his face so his curly black hair sprang from his head, his best friend Waqas Tahtamouni laughed. “You’ve been ninja assassinated!” He offered Kalbin a hand up.
Kalbin, smaller by ten kilos, took it, saying, “What are you doing?” He glanced at his hand, “You got my heart rate going so fast I think I might have an attack!”
Waqas’ eyes bugged, his gloat changing to contrition. “Awh la! I didn’t mean to! Are you hǎo?”
What Was I Trying To Say?Not entirely sure, though my character IS a metaphor. He represents a biracial teen – one foot in one world; one in another completely different one. He also discovers his father lied to him. Why? To keep him safe; to blunt the suspicions people will have about him because he’s a half-breed. Discrimination is illegal in fact; but not always “in mind.”
The Rest of the Story: Kalbin’s friend begins to ask questions about Kalbin’s origins that he’s not ready to answer. His friend then just flat-out asks him if he’s an Artificial Human; a subclass on Mars that means the same as “inferior” and “slave”.
When they finish graduation rehearsal, Kalbin confronts his father who tells him that he’s an experiment. He refuses to tell Kalbin WHY and the teen ends up ditching his father, his friends, and the sham that his “graduation” has become. He heads into the depths of Burroughs, the oldest colony on Mars.
End Analysis:I’ve learned something lately: in order to tell a story, it has to mean something. That’s obvious. What I learned in conjunction with that is that the story has to be both a mystery and be layered in metaphor. This is a layered story for certain; but I think I have TOO MANY layers for it to be effective. It’s also too short for the subject. I was writing it for a specific market, so I didn’t have enough words to really delve into it.
Can This Story Be Saved? I think so – but I have to rethink the symbolism and metaphor here. While I wrote this using Lisa Cron’s methodology, I’ve come lately to believe that a story has to do more than entertain.
Of COURSE it has to be entertaining first and foremost. Even the Bible is entertaining – sex, murder, slavery, execution, subjugation, demonic possession, war, betrayal and so much more; the Book is impossible to put down. (If only they’d get rid of those nasty “judgement” and “commandment” thingies…)
But I now think that metaphor has to be in service of the story if it’s going to not only speak to a reader today; it’s got to be so deep that it will speak to readers tomorrow. In fact, it has to be so deep that it can speak something NEW to the same reader weeks, months, years, and centuries later.
A tall order for a few thousand words. But, then doesn’t that same Bible say, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
If I’m just entertaining, then the sword isn’t sharp enough. If I’m just preaching, then the sword isn’t sharp enough, either. In either case, it’s at least half dull.
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 454

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
H Trope: Abduction = Love; a stranger kidnaps a total stranger and never lets them go.Current Event: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/08/cleveland-missing-women-berry-dejesus-knight-castro.html
They’d been locked in the basement for longer than either of them could remember. The windows – Natasha Reno-Pardo assumed that the boarded up, black painted rectangles near the ceiling of the basement were once windows – were impossible to open.
The permanent stairs had been removed and replaced by a heavy, steel drop-down stairs. Rudyard Bernal, her fellow captor had worked at getting those to drop from the ceiling for a whole week. He’d tried to pry them from the ceiling seven times after they woke up. The eighth time, he’d gotten a shock so bad his hands were burned. Not enough to blister the skin, but very painful.
Light came from two fluorescents set behind thick plastic. They never went out. Food and water came in bags dropped from a hole in the ceiling whenever they were both asleep.
They were trapped.
In the dim silence, not long after both of them were awake, Rudyard said, “I think we’ve been here a month.” Then he burst out crying. Natasha looked up at the ceiling and into the corners. They knew they were being watched all the time. Once, when they’d tried to sleep together on the same pile of blankets, to get away from the bathroom hole, snakes had suddenly dropped down from the ceiling hole and the lights had gotten super bright.
They’d spent an hour sweeping the things into the hole. They’d spent most of the time fighting the rattlesnake. Neither one of them had been bitten, but they threw the blanket covered in snake guts in another corner after stomping it to death.
This day was different. Natasha stepped over the immense red door in the center of the basement floor and sat down next to Rudyard. At first he flinched and looked up at the feeding hole and muttered, “No. What are they gonna throw at us next?”
Natasha said, “We’re not doing anything.”
He leaned against her, cried a while longer and finally rested against her.
As if to curse their closeness a grinding sound came from the drag-down stairs. Real light leaked from a narrow crack that gradually widened, letting in more and more real light. When the stairs were half uncovered, they began to come down from the ceiling, making a sound like a descending castle drawbridge.
It thudded to the floor.
A shiny, black leather boot with a neatly cuffed pant leg dropped down on the top step…
Names: ♀ Russia, Mexico ; ♂ English, MexicoImage: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OCWXw6InF70/TKigMBk87NI/AAAAAAAAAy4/tL7MhIfL9CM/s1600/2212_1025142570.jpg